This is from the New York Times review of Karen DeYoung’s new biography of Colin Powell. The difference between Powell and the “officers who ran aground” is that they’re going to heaven and he ain’t. Working for murderous fools on grounds that maybe you can keep them from doing their absolute bloody worst is not likely to impress St. Peter. The only soul you’re responsible for is your own.

Which brings us to Unstated Rule No. 2: you should cultivate an ability to overlook the idiocy of your superiors. Actually, Powell almost came right out and said this once. “I detected a common thread running through the careers of officers who ran aground even though they were clearly able,” he wrote, looking back on his time in the Army but also ahead to his time working for several presidents. “They fought what they found foolish or irrelevant, and consequently did not survive to do what they considered vital.” He never forgot, as he put it, to “pay the king his shilling.”

When Powell leaves the conventional path inside the fighting end of the military and enters the political end, he brings with him his sack of shillings. For example, he joins the first Bush administration at the pleasure of Dick Cheney, for whom he clearly felt only contempt. “As far as Powell was concerned,” DeYoung writes, “the most salient fact about Cheney was his avoidance of the Vietnam draft.” The second most salient fact was that he was, in Powell’s view, something close to a right-wing loon. But Powell hid his feelings well. “Powell had no intention of letting his personal doubts about Cheney stand in the way of his career,” DeYoung writes.

Posted by Jerome Doolittle at November 26, 2006 08:11 PM

Email this entry to:


Your email address:


Message (optional):